Politics

Jack Lessenberry Has 'an Excellent' Choice' from Michigan to Replace Justice Scalia

February 15, 2016, 12:28 PM

Michigan Radio political analyst Jack Lessenberry knows he has as much chance as Donald Trump of putting a potential Supreme Court nominee on the president's list, so he puts a name in our ear instead.

"I am sure [President Obama] doesn’t want, need, nor would be inclined to take any advice I could give as to who to appoint," Lessenberry says in his latest commentary, "but I am going to say what I think anyway."

I think he’d be well advised to think outside the box, which is lined mainly with federal appellate judges, and consider someone like Michigan Supreme Court Justice Bridget McCormack.

I do in fact know Justice McCormack . . . personally and socially, though I haven’t mentioned this idea to her and she may not be speaking to me now that I’ve said this.

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"She'd be an excellent choice," the broadcaster says of Bridget McCormack, elected to Michigan's top court in 2012.

The justice, 49, joined the state's top court in 2013 after 14 years as a University of Michigan law professor. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband, UM law professor Steven Croley (on leave as an Obama administration adviser) and their four children. 

Lessenberry makes his case for why "she'd be an excellent choice" for the vacancy opened by Antonin Scalia's death in Texas on Saturday:

She has, by all accounts, a brilliant legal mind and real-world experience, as seen in her work as a dean at the University of Michigan law school and founder of the Innocence Project. She would add a federal perspective from the state level.

Also, while she was nominated by the Democrats, she is probably more independent than anything else, and while on the court, has broken down much of the partisan nastiness that existed before. That’s something our entire society could use more of.

McCormack is also young enough -- 49 -- to build a long and productive court career.

-- Alan Stamm


Read more:  Michigan Radio


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